Sacramento Real Estate Views

Foreclosure Rate Nearly Doubles

Rate Nearly Doubles November to December

ForeclosureRadar.com reports that the foreclosure rate, notices of default sent to homeowners, nearly doubled from November to December of 2008.  This brings the foreclosure rate back up to the second quarter of 2008 record levels.

This was caused by the State of California Senate Bill 1137 halting all foreclosures that took effect in September.  All the bill did was stall the foreclosure process and now the glut of inventory that we saw coming in October is here.  Goodbye home values, hello investors.

If the government would restrict it’s activity in the private sector, maybe we could have this crisis happen gradually rather than all at once preserving whats left of the already crushed home values.

The large inventory numbers that will surely be coming on the market over the next few months will depress values in the area further and while it is likely that once most of it is sold the values will rebound quickly, who knows if it will come back as strong as it is now, which, incidentally, isn’t very strong!

The Government Involvement

The government being too intimately involved in this crisis has made it worse for those who haven’t been as effected by the downturn.  I can’t remember a time when government involvement in a domestic matter was more botched than this.

There are natural ebbs and flows to life.  This is a universal truth.  If we just let this cycle run it’s course, it will be over sooner and the damage less than if we resist and try to stop something that isn’t stoppable.

Half A Million Homes

Almost 500,000 homes were lost to foreclosure in 2008 in California.  That’s a 56% increase over 2007.  Eeessshhhh!

The report also goes on to say that lenders discounted the homes foreclosed upon by over 39% of the loan balances throughout the state.  I’ll tell you this, that number is much, much higher here in the Sacramento region.

The brighter side?  There are some GREAT deals in Sacramento real estate right now made even better by the thought that the worst of this downturn is behind us and it won’t be long now before the market begins to turn back into the homeowners favor.  Stay tuned for more info on that.

This is a very comprehensive report and I recommend it highly.  The website address is www.foreclosureradar.com.

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Tags: sacramento foreclosures

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 25th, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Foreclosure Statistics, Real Estate Market Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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